The Land of the Dead  01
by bhut
Summary: What happened to the characters of the show after they died?
1. Chapter 1

**The land of the dead - 01**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to the Impossible Pictures™._

-1-

Though it won't be made known for a long while, Tom was the one who had arrived here first. Admittedly, his moment of transition remained a bit blurry: one moment he was starring at some little blonde that began to hang around his mate Connor a lot, and the next he was lying flat on his back on something hard, staring upwards into the clear blue sky, bereft of everything save for clouds, and the sun, and an occasional pterosaur or three...

Needless to say, it was the last part that caused Tom to get onto his feet and open his eyes wider than ever. "What the," he began to say, "what the-"

A pebble slipped from beneath his shoe, causing Tom to stumble and almost fall flat on his face. "Whoa!" was all he was able to say when he recovered his equilibrium. "This is some rough country, man!"

Slowly, Tom got back on his feet, looking around. He was in some wild country, sitting, or rather standing – on a side of a mountain range, the lower slopes of which were covered in a prehistoric-looking forest that stretched almost to the very horizon, though it seemed to thin-out somewhat further away from the mountains.

"Freaky," was all that Tom could mutter, as he proceeded to look behind him. "Oh, and so is this!"

'This' actually was a cave, whose opening gaped like a dark mouth in the side of a mountain. Therefore, feeling rather cautious, but also curious, Tom made his way to it and beyond. It was empty and dry, with a sandy floor and a relatively low ceiling. It was also relatively short and uninhabited. In short, Tom liked it, he liked it a lot.

"I probably should go out, see if there are anyone else like me," he spoke to himself, "but I should probably start tomorrow morning instead. For today and tonight I should probably gather firewood in the forest that grows below...and maybe some branches for bedding?"

Needless to say, that that was exactly what Tom did and would continue to do so for a long while. However, every night he would light-up a signal fire (he saw them once or twice in a western-style movie), and would wait for a reply.

It would be a long time until he would get one.

_To be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

**The land of the dead - 01**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to the Impossible Pictures™._

-2-

The jaws of the future predator clumped shut on Ryan's neck, its hot breath penetrated his nostrils... and Captain Ryan suddenly found himself lying on a bunk bed in a tree house. It wasn't the most comfortable bunk bed, but neither was it the worst one that he had ever lain in.

"Well, this is new," he muttered to himself. "Usually I woke up anywhere else but here... and where's here?"

Carefully, Ryan stood up and looked around. His neck didn't hurt, and if his legs hadn't felt wobbly, Ryan could easily say that his supposed death by a future predator had been just a bad dream.

Or maybe it was? What indications there were that this wasn't some prank by Nick Cutter and others? Maybe he had just imagined it all instead? Slowly, he got onto his feet this time for sure and opened one of the doors. A small kitchen appeared before his gaze, composed of crudely made furniture – a table, a short bench to sit at, a small cupboard, and nothing else.

Now curious rather than wary, Ryan moved to the cupboard and opened it. Inside lay several packets of trail-mix and parcels of something, wrapped in paper. The trail-mix was modern, the paper...felt anything but. For the sake of an experiment, Ryan opened one of the parcels – it contained strips of either pemmican or jerky.

"Hmm," Ryan chewed on a piece. It wasn't badly made, actually, and was able to stave-off some of his hunger. Feeling fortified, he continued the tour.

Besides the bedroom, where Ryan found himself initially, there were only three other rooms, and one of them was locked. Since Ryan was unable to find the key, he decided not to force his way in (it was rude and uncalled-for), but check the other places.

The room to Ryan's left resembled a storage closet, complete with crudely-made shelves. It contained some tools – some modern, some self-made – and some clothing. Most of the clothing could be either male or female, but the undergarments were definitely female...

"Well, if this isn't a clue, I don't know what is," Ryan said thoughtfully, as he left the impromptu closet and went to check out the last room. Only it wasn't a room, not really. Essentially, it was a doorway, except that here the doorway was carved into the floor, complete with a rope ladder lying not far from it...and a small winged reptile was sitting on it as well.

"Aha!" exclaimed Ryan. "That's a clue!" He sidled around the opening in the floor, and looked out of the tree house's windows for the first time since he awoke.

A huge head of a leaf-eating dinosaur, with large, chisel-like teeth and horse-like eyes stared back at him. The head, incidentally, was dwarfed by the long neck and longer body and tail to which it was joined.

And far below the treetop grazing dinosaur, several smaller reptiles were feeding as well in the giant's shadow, seemingly unperturbed by their size difference with their neighbour.

"Well!" Ryan could only say, seeing how the small pterosaur flew back out of the hole in the floor and onto the body of the giant herbivore. "Now I think that I have an idea as to where can I be. But first..." he climbed out of the window as well and onto a nearby branch. It was thick and heavy, and was able to endure Ryan's weight without too much ado. Consequently, he was able to climb up and out of the foliage's shadow and look around.

An ocean of sunlight greeted his senses, an ocean of sunlight – and a sea of greenery that stretched from one horizon to another and no sign of human activity at all.

"Yeah," Ryan exhaled. "I'm in the Jurassic or whenever. Now, what am I to do?"

...It will be quite a long amount of time before Ryan would receive some sort of an answer to his question, and it would be quite a surprise as well.

_To be continued..._


	3. Chapter 3

**The land of the dead - 01**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to the Impossible Pictures™._

-3-

Getting torn alive was an agonizing way to die, but it was also brief. One moment, Valerie stood there, feeling confident as always that her sabre-toothed baby would take care of their enemies in no time flat, the next – she was being torn apart by the sabre-shaped teeth in question and boy, did they hurt.

But then, abruptly, the pain stopped. Valerie opened her eyes – realized that she had still eyes and eyelids to open – and sat abruptly.

"I am..." she wanted to say "not eaten", but trailed away, as she realized that she was no longer in her front yard, but on a steep mountain slope, where a chilly wind was blowing. Therefore, she had to settle for "Where am I?" instead.

Now that was a good question, actually. This place didn't look anything like England...or any civilized countryside for that matter. Instead, as far as Valerie could see, there were no signs of human civilization anywhere... except for a solitary plume of smoke that was rising somewhat slightly further down the slope. Surely, this was a sign of human civilization or at least inhabitation?

Feeling encouraged, Valerie began to move down the slope.

There was human civilization here, of sorts. More exactly, there was a cave, and before the cave there was a fire, and before the fire there was a man. "Um, hello?" Valerie spoke, feeling less enthusiastic than before. "I'm Valerie. And who are you?"

"Tom," the man blinked, warily. "Where did you come from?"

"An amusement park. I was a ranger there."

"Oh." Tom says. "What was it like?"

Valerie grimaces. "I would've probably enjoyed it a lot more if I was a different person. Can I sit at your fire?"

"Sure," Tom shrugs. "You're the first person I've ran into since I died."

"...Say what?"

"The two of us, we're dead, dead and stuck in some sort of an afterlife for animals – prehistoric animals, I say," Tom elaborates. "I've been here for months, and you're the first person other than me that I have ever met."

"So? This doesn't prove that we're dead..." Valerie trailed away, as the memories of her pet turning on her rose unbidden in her mind. "It doesn't!" she added, desperately.

"Perhaps," Tom agreed easily, "but after several days of being here, you'll see my point nothing ever changes here, not even the weather. Why, I think that today was the first thunderstorm since _I_ arrived here, and I've been here for several months already!"

"For several months?" Valerie said, incredulously. "You don't look like you've been here for several months."

"My point exactly," Tom nodded. "And after several months here, neither will you!"

"Um," Valerie said in an uncertain voice. "Several months?"

"We're dead, we're not going anywhere," Tom shrugged. "Want to bet?"

"You're on!" Valerie said firmly.

_To be continued..._


	4. Chapter 4

**-The Land of the Dead – 01**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

-4-

"...Have you ever seen a man eaten alive?" Oliver Leek's own words, spoken moments before, came to literally haunt him, as the future predators, released from the neural control by the actions of Nick Cutter, turned upon him with a vengeance – and a swift efficiency. He got ripped and eaten alive so quickly that he was unable to feel any pain (at least register it in his own brain) before he fell on the floor and died.

And then there was a thump. "Hah?" the supposedly deceased civil servant blinked and got on his feet. "I am – alive?" He blinked as the sun shone through the rapidly dispersing rain clouds. "I'm – where?"

As a matter of fact, Leek appeared to be standing on a side of a mountain ridge, with the sun shining down on him, and a wind blowing downwards, away from him, with a somewhat mocking tone, to Leek's ears.

"Okay," Oliver gulped, "I seem to be somehow untouched by the future predators on one hand, and be someplace that is not London on the other. Is it good or bad? Time will tell, for right now I'm just confused as Hell."

As a matter of fact, the former civil servant was lying once again, even to himself, as it was in his nature. Subconsciously, he knew that while there was some confusion in his mind, mostly he was upset (to put it lightly) that he plans of taking over the English government have failed; at the moment, however, that wasn't too important...

Abruptly, a shadow passed between Oliver Leek and the sun; the passing was brief and fleeing, but long enough for him to look up and feel faint, as he saw two or three giant reptiles fly past him like several giant kites. "Impossible," he said weakly, as he sat down onto the hard, rocky ground. "Inconceivable. Is Helen Cutter behind this?"

Indeed, this was a reasonable assumption, Leek mused. The woman was very knowledgeable about all things prehistoric, as a certain failed mission to the Silurian time period had proved. However, she also had a huge ego that had allowed Leek to run rings around her during their period of co-operation, and finally come on top – only to be toppled by Helen's husband. Could it be that Helen decided to put her own two bits into Oliver's humiliation and make it even more poignant?

"No!" Leek snapped as he looked outwards from his perch on the mountainside, "I will not believe it! I defy you! I did not survive the multitude of Johnson's plots only to be foiled by a pair of scientists! I will find a way out of this!"

"See, I told you that someone was here," a completely unfamiliar voice broke through Leek's rant.

Startled, the former civil servant whirled in the direction of the speaker. A couple – a man and a woman – of complete strangers were coming up to him.

"Hey, dude," the young man continued to speak. "I'm Tom, and this is Valerie. And who are you?"

"I'm Oliver," the latter replied, eyeing the woman suspiciously – for some reason her name sounded vaguely familiar. "Where am I?"

"This is our afterlife," Valerie shrugged. "You can consider this to be Heaven or Hell, but here we'll be until the end of the time or whenever."

"...I'm Catholic," Oliver admitted after a prolonged silence.

"...Hah?" Valerie and Tom exclaimed after prolonged silences of their own.

"I believe in the Purgatory as well," Oliver realized that an elaboration was needed, "and unlike Heaven and Hell the Purgatory was supposed to be on a mountainside... it's complicated. The point is that I expected my afterlife to be worse than just a pristine wilderness or something."

"It's not pristine," the woman – Valerie – said with a surprising vehemence. "It's wild and full of cave lions and cave bears, of mammoths and dinosaurs in the forest that grows below-"

"The two of you have dealt with them," Leek pointed out, "and this could've been a real, old-fashioned Hell. Now _that_ would be bad. This – I can handle." He paused and looked at the sky: as the three of them had talked, it had moved further up the sky and was going over the top of the mountain ridge. "Out of curiosity, do you have a place I can spend the night in?" he added, belatedly.

"Sure, come on in to our cave – the nights here are cold, much colder than the days," Tom nodded, sagely.

Oliver shrugged. Honestly, the Catholic part of him expected to end up in an infernal cauldron full of boiling pitch or tar, so a wild cave on a mountainside didn't sound too bad, honestly. "Lead on," he said cheerfully, unaware that an unlikely friendship was beginning to manifest between the three of them. "And, by the way, what's on the other side of these mountains? Down here, I think I can see a really massive forest, but there-"

"The mountains go down straight to the sea, where more than just fish do live," Tom shrugged. "We'll show you tomorrow."

"Oh, _good_."

_To be continued..._


	5. Chapter 5

**The Land of the Dead – 01**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

-5-

Stephen opened his eyes and thought that he had gone mad. The majority of Leek's crazy menagerie has come open him, a host of gnashing teeth and slashing claws and he... well, actually, he wasn't sure that he had been able to experience anything before he died. He _did_ die, however, and he had died in Leek's crazy hide-out, not here, in a rather spacious and airy room that... didn't look like anything he had ever encountered.

Feeling confused, mystified, Stephen stood up and looked around. Nothing has changed. He was still located in a large, airy room with windows that were made not out glass, but out of bladder; the walls, though, seemed to be made from wood and stone... for some reason that had shocked Stephen the most.

"I'm dead," he muttered to himself, "I'm dead, and I've crossed into the world of the bizarre..." with these words he got up and abruptly left the room that he found himself in.

Sadly, this wasn't to be the end of the weirdness, as Stephen had privately hoped. Instead, he found himself in a circular corridor that led to other rooms and also had a spiralling staircase that led to an upper floor. "Hmm," Stephen said thoughtfully. "I think I have a thought." He took a deep breath and went outside through the front door that he saw just a short while earlier.

"Well, that was expected," Stephen said slowly as he emerged from the tower into the sunlit weather outside and looked up, seeing that the house he found himself in was no house, but rather a lighthouse-like tower composed of two or three floors, though only the first two of them seemed to be inhabited... or rather, designed to be inhabited, the topmost floor – not so much.

"I died saving the world and for my pains I inherited a lighthouse?" Stephen spoke incredulously. "That just doesn't make sense!" With these words, he turned around and found himself facing two worlds.

On Stephen's right side stretched a great plain, where creatures of various size and appearance browsed or stalked those who did. Some were mammals – but no mammals that Stephen had ever seen – others were clearly dinosaurs, while the third were neither but reptiles of some different sort altogether. This plain stretched as far as Stephen could see in both directions and away from him, though there, at the edge of the horizon, it appeared to be replaced with something darker – a mountain range, perhaps, or a forest.

Meanwhile, on Stephen's left side a great blue ocean was stretching just as far as the plain on his right did. Even as Stephen looked, a great fanged head that belonged to neither a fish nor a sperm whale burst briefly from the water, took a greedy breath of air and submerged once again with hardly a ripple.

"Well, _that_ settles it," Stephen said flatly. "I died and I ended up in a paradise made for Nick. Clearly, there had been some mix-up, so to speak... So, I think I will just go and live here for now, and then we'll see what'll happen."

Stephen's forebodings didn't lie; this _was_ a paradise made for Nick. However, it would be a while until Nick himself arrived here...

_To be continued..._


	6. Chapter 6

**The Land of the Dead – 01**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

-6-

Helen's shot fired like a cannon; Nick could only blink once in confusion, before he fell and the fog in the sky – or was it only in his eyes? – began to close in. "Tell Claudia Brown," he muttered weakly, "tell Claudia Brown..."

"Sorry, mate," a voice that was definitely _not_ Claudia's, but very familiar all the same, "I haven't seen Claudia for a long, long time, and probably won't see her longer yet. The same goes for you as well, but at least we'll have each other for company, hopefully..."

Nick's eyes opened wide. There was no fog, there was no smog, and the weather was rather unlike anything that the good old dreary England had ever thrown at him. "Stephen!" he said, excitedly. "Is that you?"

"Yup," Stephen nodded. "It's me. And this is the lighthouse."

"What lighthouse?"

"Where I've lived since I died. Speaking of deaths – how did yours go?"

"Helen shot me. Helen shot me? I'm dead?"

"Yes," Stephen nodded, this time more solemnly. "And – she shot you? How could she?"

"In hindsight I suspect me and the others getting the best of her – _again _– and then I doing a bit of gloating while she was armed, dangerous and probably mentally unstable was not the smartest thing to do," Nick said sheepishly. "Anyways, let's talk about someplace else. Got to admit this doesn't look like any sort of afterlife that I expected to end up at."

"Well, it doesn't have the garden – or is it the tree? – of Eden, but there are giant long-necked dinosaurs, and meat-eating dinosaurs, and there's this rather neat family of stegosaurs, kind of like ducks, only with four legs... and spikes... and armoured plates on their backs... and not very duck-like behaviour..."

"I get the picture," Nick said, seeing how Stephen was about to get carried away. "Are there any people, though?"

"...No," Stephen admitted, his excitement souring once again. "No people and no signs of civilization. Thought that I saw smoke several times, but I couldn't be sure, and it could've been wildfires instead, to begin with."

"Point," Nick admitted. "So, no people, but plenty of dinosaurs and what-not. Someone in the universe has a sense of humour, I believe, or of something else."

"Yup," Stephen nodded, sombrely. "Anyways, I've been sketching some crude maps as far as my eye could see, and, well, here they are."

For several good long minutes Nick just stared at Stephen's maps, long enough for him to grow worried. "Something's wrong?" the younger man finally said.

"Stephen, this is _canvas_. It's been artificially whitened somehow, but it's still _canvas_. You've drawing on _canvas_," Nick spoke in a somewhat dazed tone.

"Really?" Stephen sounded more confused than apologetic, which is probably how he felt. "So what?"

"I'm not sure," Nick admitted. "It's just – I don't know – I never seen anyone draw on canvas, especially in charcoal. Anyways, what's your point?"

"I'm not sure," Stephen admits slowly, "but now that you're here, and I'm already here, maybe we should go exploring or something? It's just a thought."

Nick ponders about this for less than ten minutes – just enough to have Stephen to begin to worry (an impromptu payback for the canvas thing). "Well, why not," he finally says. "It's not like we don't have an eternity to spend with each other, and it's not like we can _die_ anymore, now can we? We'll leave first thing tomorrow."

"Great!" Stephen grinned as he hadn't grinned for a long while, and Nick found himself grinning back. It sounded funny (funny as in weird or strange), but it appeared that with his death he began to properly live at last, as he dreamed of living... if it wasn't for his mother, admittedly. Maybe he really ought to thank Helen when (or if) they'll meet again, but hopefully it won't be for a while.

And Nick was correct about one thing – he _didn't_ run into Helen for a while...but this 'while' was shorter than what he had expected...

_To be continued..._


	7. Chapter 7

**The Land of the Dead – 01**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

-7-

The breath of the giant dinosaur is overpowering with its stench, its maw – a red and black cavern studded with large, bladelike teeth which snap shut and rip through Katherine and Mick like an oversized bear trap. There's just a flash of something that is suspiciously like pain, and then-

And then it was over. Mick and Katherine abruptly find themselves sitting somewhere else. This place is sunny and windy and definitely outdoors – something that both of them hate with a vengeance. "Where are we now?" Katherine asks flatly of Mick, as she used to for many a year of their professional relationship.

"How should I know?" Mick replies flatly. "The last thing I remember is the dinosaur chomping down on us..."

A pause, as the two of them exchange looks. "This doesn't make sense," Mick finally speaks. "People just aren't teleported out of a dinosaur's mouth to, to- where are we?"

"I asked you that just now!" Katherine snaps as she abruptly gets onto her feet. "Think that that dinosaur had something to do with it? And speaking of that dinosaur-"

"No, let's not speak of the dinosaur," Mick says, with a noticeable bitterness. "I'm done talking about the dinosaur. In fact, I remember saying that I was quitting just before the dinosaur-"

"Oh, come on!" Katherine exclaims impatiently. "You've quit about as often as I fired you, and look at us right now – we're still together!"

There's a pause as the two of them just stare at each other, thinking over what Katherine just said.

"I meant professionally," Katherine finally breaks the silence when it becomes uncomfortable for real. "Seriously, and besides even if you would quit right now – where would you go? We appear to be in the middle of nowhere of all things!"

There's another pause as the quarrelling pair just stand there and look around. As a matter of fact, they were standing in some sort of a mountain valley, steeply-sided and overgrown with some sort of conifer tree. There was also a small, rather comfortable-looking house standing there as well, complete with an antenna.

"Civilization!" Katherine shouted with excitement and ran there, with Mick following her more slowly, still thinking about Katherine's unexpected relationship revelation...

When Mick and Katherine finally got to their new destination, Katherine's excitement had died down, somewhat. The building was solid, but also seemed to have been unused for quite a while, and it certainly had more dust than it was probably healthy. "Well, at least it has an antenna," Mick said, trying to cheer the once more discourage Katherine up. "Maybe it won't be as bad."

"Yeah – maybe it won't be a crazy, anti-social hermit," Katherine snapped and opened the door. A strange sight greeted her and Mick (and now, it wasn't an anti-social hermit) – a small, rather unused TV and radio station, covered in some dust, but still clearly usable.

"Hey, look, there's a schedule," Katherine noticed a rather familiar-looking piece of paperwork. "Interesting – it's a blank, yet it got daily and hourly slots printed out on it, ready and available to fill in and use."

"And who's going to use it? Us?" Mick said, sarcastically. "I may have some knowledge of working a camera, but when was the last time that you've did something, anything outside of your office? Like, for real?"

"Like, today!" Katherine snapped. "Or have you forgotten where we _died_?"

Once again, silence fell. "So, we died," Mick finally spoke. "Fair enough. What are we doing here, then? Haunting it?"

"Why not?" Katherine shrugged. "It's not like we've got anything better to do for the rest of the eternity. I'm game if you are."

For several minutes Mick appeared to be thinking it over, for the sake of the decorum, if anything else. "Very well, deal," he finally nodded. "I want to see you report, if anything else. Lead on, MacDuff!"

"And damned be he, who cries first, hold, enough!" Katherine grinned back. "You're own, Harper!"

_To be continued..._


	8. Chapter 8

**The Land of the Dead – 01**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

-8-

The future predator had attacked Christine Johnson with a viciousness that was well-deserved, given the many months of experiments that had been conducted upon it, and the fact that it actually had a very good memory. It was like being savaged by a cross between a bull shark and a circular saw, and when it was over, when it had faded away, Christine just couldn't believe it – she just lay there, even as her senses seemed to be coming back, and did nothing.

"Are you going to lie here for long?" a totally unfamiliar, masculine voice speaks, startling Christine. "Because that would just not be right."

Christine Johnson blinked, and realized that she was apparently alive and lying face down on someone else's bed, her butt up in the air for everyone to see. And when Helen Cutter had captured her, she was wearing a dress...

"Whoa!" was the next thing the man said as Christine Johnson shifted her poise and stood-up abruptly. "There's no need to panic-"

"And I am not panicking!" Christine spoke in a shriller voice than she would've liked. "I am- Where _am_ I?"

"In a tree house," the man replied, more bemused than anything. "How'd you get _here_?"

"I have no idea," Christine muttered, smoothing the wrinkles on her suit. "The last thing I remember was the future predator-"

"Oh, that probably explains it," the man nodded, apparently understanding what she was talking about. "That's pretty much the last thing I remember too – well, that and Nick Cutter."

Nick Cutter? The name sounded somewhat familiar, but Christine didn't care. "You know about them?" she said slowly.

"Not much," the man admitted. "Know that they've probably descended from bats or rats... but where are my manners? My name's Ryan, and yours?"

"Christine," Christine Johnson replied before she could think it through. "I mean, it's- oh, never mind, Christine will do fine." She exhaled. "Now what?"

"I've no idea," Ryan admitted. "I do know that this bed is not big enough for the both of us at all."

"Um," Christine turned around to take another good look at the bed upon which she had landed – and promptly fell face first on it once again, as one of her high heels got caught between two floorboards.

"I think," Ryan's voice was so carefully devoid of humour, "that some change in shoes and clothing is required, don't you think?"

Christine Johnson began to reply, then she realized that Ryan probably couldn't understand her if she was talking straight into his blanket, and got back up. "Why, do you have any?" she asked, acidly.

"As a matter of fact, in a matter of speaking..."

The tree house may have been spacious, but it was also rather empty: only some furniture (and very simple one at that), and no decorations – the practical minimalist style. The floorboards may have had no splinters, but also no carpeting. They _did_ have gaps, so after some thinking Christine decided to follow Ryan barefoot. Fortunately, she didn't get any splinters _or_ ruined her stockings, but when they arrived at the store room, she was in for a surprise.

"This isn't men's clothing – it's feminine, well, technically speaking," she finally said.

"Yeah, it is," Ryan agreed, easily. "Probably belongs to the original owner of this tree house – it was there when I found myself here. The undergarments are definitely female, but the rest of the clothing can be adjusted to fit me... but that's not your point, is it?"

"No, and probably not yours," Christine muttered sourly, as she looked closer at the clothing – and felt a sudden chill. She recognized this style of clothing – Helen Cutter had been wearing something very similar to this when she had Christine killed. "This isn't your tree house, is it?" she finally muttered.

"That is what I was saying," Ryan began, but then caught Christine's eyes and fell silent. "That's not what it's about, is it?"

"No," Christine seemed to have made a decision. "It's not. But you're going to leave and let me change alone – we're not that familiar yet."

"No, but we possibly can be," Ryan replied in a deliberately teasing tone.

"Out!" Christine snapped, throwing one of her shoes at him, and deliberately missing him by a mile. Fortunately, Ryan caught the hint and retreated, leaving Christine on her own.

"Well, Miss Johnson, what will you do now?" Christine asked herself, even as she put on some Helen Cutter's theoretical spare suits. "Besides possibly ask Helen for a mirror the next time you'll see her? Well, the answer is simple – survive, survive as you always have whenever Sir bloody Lester and his cronies would shove you into another political hell-hole – I'll survive, I'll endure, and perhaps I'll even flourish. The court isn't over, ladies and gentlemen of the jury – Christine Johnson will go on!"

_To be continued..._


	9. Chapter 9

**The Land of the Dead – 01**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

-9-

The first thing that Helen Cutter realized that her back didn't hurt and that there was no raptor-theropod lying on her. The second thing was that she wasn't lying on the sun-baked soil and rough rocks of the Pliocene Africa's Rift Valley either, but somewhere else.

"Well, can't say that I'm surprised to see you finally show up," a rather bitter and familiar female voice spoke from Helen's left.

"Ms. Johnson, nice to see you, really," Helen said flatly as she got off... a bed. "What are you doing here?"

"I've been asking myself the same question for a while," Christine admitted, "but eventually I decided that it is a mystery beyond my comprehension, so nowadays I just live here."

"Alone?" Helen asks, incredulously. "That's a bit of a stretch, wouldn't you say?"

"Not alone, with me – uh, technically speaking," Ryan says as he enters the room. "Got to admit, Mrs. Cutter, we haven't expected you for a good long while."

"You were wrong," Helen languidly shrugs as she begins to examine the contents of her backpack. "I was actually ready to get here for a good long while."

"You _know_ that here's the afterlife?" Christine says, incredulously.

"It looks like a semi-permanent base I've been forced to set up in the Jurassic over the years," Helen shrugs. "Of course I recognized this hellish place as soon as I got here – this is my place of eternal damnation, it seems."

"Oh, come on!" Ryan rolls his eyes. "Sure, these little flying dinosaurs are pests, and there's nothing like being awakened by a giant herbivore, snacking on foliage right outside your window, but Hell? That's a little harsh, don't you think?"

"First of all, the flying reptiles are pterosaurs – hasn't Nick told you that?" Helen responds to Ryan's questions with a question of her own.

"No, before I died this never came up, even if the flying reptiles did," Ryan begins, but catches Helen's incredulous look and something in his head just clicks.

"He's here," he states rather than asks, "and because of you, I suppose?"

"Yes," Helen nods in reply. "Even since Stephen died... it was only a matter of time before the two of us had that sort of a confrontation."

"I've heard rumours, but this? This is richer than I expected to," Christine cannot help but put her two cents in.

Helen whips her head from facing Ryan to facing Christine incredibly quickly. "Oliver Leek," she says a name that Ryan hadn't heard before.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Christine colors but stands her ground.

"I know that you do, and so does Lester – so do his superiors: how do you think Lester was able to shake-off your coup so quickly?" Helen isn't bugling either. "There _is_ blood on my hands, and I fully deserve to spend my eternity in here, but at least, unlike you, I was honest enough to myself to recognize myself for what I am, and also brave enough to get my own hands dirty while striding for it. You, on the other hand, don't have even _that_."

"That's enough!" Ryan snaps, seeing Helen get progressively angrier and Christine progressively pale. "Helen, that's enough!"

"It probably is," Helen agrees suspiciously easy. "Well, it's been pleasant catching up to you, but I got to get going and find myself a cave somewhere or something-"

"You're not going anywhere," Ryan finally says. "This _is_ your place, Christine and I have figured it out, and it is not right for us to stay if you'll leave."

"What makes you think that I have any moral right to be here?" Helen asks flatly.

"The correct question here is what moral right do _we_ have to stay here if the rightful owner won't?" Ryan shoots her head. "Quite possible that your self-disgust _is_ justified, but think of it this way: what better way to repent it than to hang around with Christine, if she disgusts you so much? And maybe the three of us can help each other, somehow..."

Both women stare at Ryan as if he was a future predator that suddenly began to tap-dance. "What?" Ryan asks, a bit uncomfortable. "I was in the army, working with people with whom we may not have gotten along is what I did. This isn't too different, I suppose..." he trails away, noticing that the two women exchange thoughtful looks between each other.

"This could work," Helen finally admits, "and I can always sleep in my workshop, leaving the bed to you two."

"I tend to sleep on the roof, actually," Ryan admits, sheepishly. "This isn't the right sort of a bed, um..."

"Well, I probably have a fishbone saw in my workshop, and then there's that," Helen pulls out a small and folded entrenching tool from her backpack. "It can work as an axe – I've tested it."

Ryan stares at the e-tool was something suspiciously like an orgasm in his eyes. "I think," he speaks more to the tool than to Helen, "that this is the beginning of something great."

"Yeah," Christine says, a lot less enthusiastically. "Great."

"Oh, relax," Helen says with less hostility than before. "The captain here has a point – let's try to co-exist and see if it works, shall we?"

"Fine," Christine nods, and pulls one of her hands forwards. "Shake on it?"

Reluctantly, Helen shakes Christine's hand – clearly the two of them will not be friends any time soon.

"That's the spirit!" Ryan obviously knows when to pick his battles. "Now let's go and see what we can do about furniture!"

_To be continued..._


	10. Chapter 10

**The Land of the Dead – 01**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

-10-

Monstrous jaws clumped around her waist and lower body, and the pain caused her mouth to open wide, flooding her respiratory system with stagnant water of the Carboniferous swamps. "Becker!" Sarah Page shouted in vain. "Becker!"

And then she hit something harder than the swampy water, slightly warmer and drier and there wasn't any water in her mouth, nose or lungs anymore. "Becker?" she asked, more quietly, even as she hugged it. "Becker?"

"Ah, no, Sarah, it's me – Nick Cutter," a familiar, but unexpected male voice spoke from above her. "What has happened to you, and why are you hugging my legs?"

"Nick!' Sarah exclaimed, embarrassed to say the least. "It's you! But I remember! Helen shot you! You died!"

"Exactly," Nick nodded patiently, "and apparently, Sarah, so did you."

Sarah paused, and then paled. "I, I mean, we, I mean Becker and I, were going to rescue Abby, Connor and Danny as they went into the past to stop Helen from whatever crazy plan she was going to implement, but it didn't work: I got drowned by giant Carboniferous amphibians, and Becker – he's not here, is he?"

"No, he's not," a younger man, who definitely was not Becker, spoke from Nick's left side. "In fact, you're the first person we've seen in a while."

"Right, and you are?" Sarah asked, rather pointedly.

"Oh, right, let me introduce you to each other. Stephen – this is Sarah Page, a master Egyptologist and a great organizer. Sarah – this is Stephen Hart, you remember me telling you about him?"

"Nothing too embarrassing, I hope?" Stephen asked, cheekily.

"Why don't you ask him?" Sarah carefully made her way to one rough-looking chair and sat down. "So, um, what's it like down here?"

"Interesting," Nick said slowly, "but you are the first person Stephen and I have met ever since we ended up here, so this should tell you something."

"Oh! Really?" Sarah blinked. "Is this supposed to make me feel better or worse?"

"Neither – that's just Cutter being honest," Stephen shrugged. "Um, what are your plans for now, anyways? Because, honestly, for all of our love of the dinosaurs and the such, having another person for company is great! Hell, even if Helen would appear right now we'd give her a chance!"

'Not if you knew that she had Christine Johnson murdered,' Sarah thought, but kept her opinion to herself: now that she herself was dead, her opinions about some things were beginning to change, and more over, the deceased had been a piece of work in her own right, and ever since her death, Christine Johnson was not mentioned at the ARC at all.

"Fair enough," she replied instead. "You'll have no complaints from me, but, uh, do you have a guest room or something wherever 'here' is? Because, well, we don't know each other _that_ well..."

"Actually we have," Nick said, wryly. "So don't worry. In fact, why don't we give you a very brief tour of our home and of your room in particular?"

Sarah just nodded and meekly followed the two men into their home. 'My life is over,' she thought quietly, 'but maybe death is only the beginning?'

_The end._


End file.
